Monthly Archives: March 2015

As first revealed at PAX, Robot Entertainment have been working with Sandy at Petersen Games to bring Orcs Must Die! to table tops. Sandy has close ties to the studio having previously worked at Ensemble Studios.

We were told the game would soon be making it to Kickstarter for crowd funding. Just under 24 hours ago the project launched on Kickstarter. I am very pleased to advise that overnight the project has already met its funding target! This is an outstanding achievement and is a testament to Orcs Must Die! as a franchise and the talented minds at Petersen Games.

Be sure to check out the Kickstarter and pledge your support for the stretch goals and secure your copy of either the Order or Unchained board games, or both! Details of the stretch goals to go can be found below. I’m confident we will be able to see these come to light.

Good news for OMD fans, the wait is almost over for the next big OMDU beta release. Phase 2 of the closed beta is kicking off this Tuesday, March 24th in the US and soon after in the EU.

Its been four months since we last saw an OMDU update from Robot, back in November where we saw the Apprentice being added to the hero roster. Since then the studio has been working very hard over these last few months to make some big changes to make the game even more awesome. As you can imagine all these changes over these few months is sure to result in one biiiiig patch list! Indeed – Robot has now made available the almighty patch notes for Phase 2 highlighting the signficant amount of changes that we will be seeing.

Some of key changes in phase 2 is the pace of the game has been slowed down, heroes move slower, hero abilities have animations that take a small amount of time to play out and some abilities now need to be unlocked via weaver upgrades before they can be used. Speaking of weavers, they have been completely re-designed in Phase 2 as shown in a recent Insider Access stream. The weavers now unlock over time in a match and players can choose certain upgrades at that point.

The weavers are just one of many things that have been changed and added. There are now bosses, new traps, and a re-worked minion and currency model. Heroes are now assigned clear and defined roles (offence / defence) and they now get an appropriate type of currency at the start of the map depending on their hero type.

There is just so much new and changed stuff it is difficult to cover everything here. However Ian “Mother” Fischer has provided us with a handy summary on the patch notes to help us get in the picture for those not brave enough to soak in the full patch notes.

There are a couple of additional things worth highlighting – not all the heroes will be playable in the first phase 2 build. These heroes are still being worked on and will show up later down the line. The heroes confirmed for the first build this week are:

Smolder

Stinkeye

Cygnus (Master)

Maximilian (War Mage)

Gabriella (Sorceress)

Midnight

Ivy

Blackpaw

Hogarth

Dobbin (Prospector)

You may also notice they some of the Heroes now have names. This is to allow the clever minds at Robot to build in some back story for the heroes.

The trap limits per card have been abolished. Now when you own the card you can place the trap as many times as you like, subject to currency and overall trap count cap. Also heroes no longer take damage from traps. (They only took negligible damage in the first place). This also means heroes can no longer set off traps, too.

The traps available in the first phase 2 build are:

Anti-Magic Field – This Trap removes glyph effects from Minions that cross it and silences passing enemy Heroes briefly.

Arrow Walls – A number of the old variants have been removed. The normal Arrow Walls, Fire Arrow Walls, and Glory Seeker Arrow Walls are active.

Ballistae – A number of the old variants have been removed. The normal Ballista, the Cursed Ballista, and the Glory Seeker Ballista are active. All Ballistae target in a full 360 degree arc now, rotation does not matter.

Barricade – An old favorite that makes a huge difference in the design of your killbox. Be careful using too many of these and not enough damage Traps. Original versions and the Great Wall (2×1) are in the game.

Boulder Chute – Triggered and does more damage with higher placement. The damage is a shorter duration now. The default version and the Iceberg version are in the game.

Brimstone – Variants have been retired, only normal Brimstone is currently in the game.

Cursed Ground – No more Greater Cursed Ground but this one still does Arcane damage to Minions atop it. This Trap now uses charges.

Floor Scorcher – Directional, pop-up floor Trap that does fire damage. (Note that it does not flip Minions atop it when it fires.)

Floor Spikes – All variants of this Trap have been retried but the default spikes are still around (and fairly important in many early games).

Grinder – Anything close gets a good grinding.

Hammer Drop – This Trap requires a 2×2 ceiling space to place but only does damage in a 1×1 corner of the Trap. Good against larger, higher health Minions.

Hero Victories

Hero Victories are a new feature for phase 2 and encourages players to play with other heroes. Players now get rewarded as they play with heroes and each victory counts against a running total. Depending how many victories you have with a hero depends on the rewards you can unlock. This sounds like a great incentive for encouraging variety with the heroes people choose to play as. Players unlock a unique skin at 100 victories as that hero too. The rewards you can get are as follows:

Full patch notes

We’ll be covering off some more highlights in the almighty patch notes over the next few days. If you can’t wait until then be sure to check out the full patch notes over on the OMDU forums for both NA and EU.

Eagle eyed fans who have been keeping track of the Orce Must Die! Facebook page this week may have noticed that there is a new game coming to the Orcs Must Die! series.

Can you see it? Just look to the bottom right hand corner. Its the Orcs Must Die! Board Game!

Thats right, Orcs Must Die! is coming to table tops! The board game will be a new Kickstarter project which will be launching soon headed up by Sandy Petersen of Petersen Entertainment. We can’t think of anyone better to run this project than Sandy. He has very close ties to the studio and many fans of Ensemble Studios will remember his name from his many “Ask Sandy” features he did for the Age of Empires community.

It’s great news to hear Sandy is working with Robot Entertainment on this addition to the Orcs Must Die! brand. Sandy has had great success launching board games on Kickstarter. His Cthulhu Wars board game Kickstarter achieved funding of $1,403,981 from its original goal of $40,000. That’s a huge success.

The board game will consist of two different versions – one for the Order and the other for the Unchained. Describing the game on the Petersen Entertainment website:

Orcs Must Die : The Boardgame actually consists of TWO separate games! One is based on the heroic Order, while the other is for the Unchained. Both are complete stand-alone games. In Order, you’ll play your favorite heroes such as Maximilian the War Mage, Gabriella the Redeemed Sorceress, and others, while fending off the villainous orc onslaught. In Unchained, you play opposing heroes, such as the Kobold King or Midnight the assassin, facing down assaults by human soldiers, lions, elves, bears, dwarfs, and the like.

If you or your friends own both the Order and Unchained versions of Orcs Must Die : The Boardgame , you can go head-to-head, leading your armies into the citadel of your enemy! Up to 8 players can team up against each other in the combined game, which boasts well over a hundred large-scale high-quality figures.

To find out more about the game and how to play be sure to check out the website. We’ll let you know as soon as this project lands on Kickstarter. I’m sure we’ll be able to reach some very cool stretch goals!